Tracy Tang, Ph.D.

Head of Biology

Tracy Tang, Ph.D., serves as the head of biology at Vivace Therapeutics. Prior to joining Vivace, she was a senior scientist in translational medicine at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, where she led and managed many aspects of the company’s clinical biomarker operations, including clinical kit design and inventories, patient sample tracking and analysis. She supported Oncomed’s anti-NOTCH (OMP-59R5 and OMP-52M51) and anti-WNT (OMP-18R5 and OMP-54F28) clinical trials, and led the generation of antibody reagents and in vitro assays for predictive biomarker discovery and validation. Dr. Tang began her career at Genentech, where she managed several large-scale research projects, including the cancer genome project and collaborations with Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and Curis. Beyond her role as a scientific manager, she was a major contributor to the development of the topical non-systemic Hedgehog Pathway small molecule inhibitor CUR61414, which completed a Phase I study in superficical or nodular basal-cell carcinoma, and the orally available Hedgehog Pathway inhibitor GDC-0449 (Vismodegib), which gained FDA approval in 2012. She has co-authored a number of oft-cited publications and is co-inventor on three patents. Dr. Tang holds a doctorate in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied the regulation of sister-chromatid cohesion in meiotic and mitotic cell cycle in the laboratory of Dr. Terry L. Orr-weaver, and conducted her postdoctoral research with Dr. Laurence A. Lasky and Dr. Vishva Dixit at Genentech. She earned a B.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology, with emphasis in Biochemistry, from the University of California, Berkeley.